Vinod Yadav: First CEO Of Restructured Railway Board

• 05 Sep 2020

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of the current chairman of the Railway Board V K Yadav as the first ever Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organisation as part of the government decision to restructure the Railway Board.
• The corporatisation plan was part of a proposal clea­red by the Cab­inet in Decem­ber 2019 for ma­king the 115-year-old board leaner by cutting its strength from eight to five.

The Reconstituted Board

• The board will now be headed by Yadav as chairman and CEO, and will have four others — Pradeep Kumar as member (infrastructure), P C Sharma as member (traction and rolling stock), P S Mishra as member (operations and business development), and ManjulaRangarajan as member (finance).

Other Notable Changes

IRHS: The Indian Railway Medical Service (IRMS) will be renamed the Indian Railway Health Service (IRHS).

IRMS: The process to merge eight railway-related wings into a single central service called the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) is underway.

Various Committees for Reforming Railways

• The unification of services had earlier been mooted by various committees for reforming Railways including - the Prakash Tandon Committee (1994), Rakesh Mohan Committee (2001), Sam Pitroda Committee (2012) and Bibek Debroy Committee (2015).

Benefits of this Move

• The restructuring will be a zero-cost exercise. Money will be saved because of the surrendered board posts, and by stopping duplication of works.